Where the Wine Flows Freely and the Streets are Paved with Etruscan Tombs

A travel guide to the Tuscan hilltown of Montepulciano

Casks of Vino Noble di Montepulciano aging in the Cantina de Redi cellars.

Amid the tall, rolling hills south of Siena that produce some of Italy's mightiest red wines lies the hilltown of Montepulciano, home to the powerful, versatile

Vino Nobile di Montepulciano

.

For more than 1,200 years, this "noble wine" has been aged and bottled in the

wine cellars under Montepulciano's Renaissance palazzi,

warrens of stony rooms and tunnels carved into the tufa bedrock—some dating back to the ancient Etruscans.

MONTEPULCIANO 101
Information
www.comune.montepulciano.siena.it
Where to Stay
Hotel La Terrazza di Montepulciano
Hotel Panoramic
Hotel Il Rondó
» More hotels in town (from €65)
» B&Bs in Montepulciano (from €70)
» Apartments in town (from €100)

Many are open to visitors under shop fronts offering free samples of wine, grappa, and sometimes cured meats, cheeses, and breads produced by the vineyards' farms. Who said there's no such thing as a free lunch? Plus, you'll never find a better price on bottled of Italy's top wine labels to take home.

These free smorgasbords concentrate at the bottom of town along

Via Gracchiano nel Corso

, and at the top of town on and around

Piazza Grande

, but four stand out.

Ercolani/Pulcino,

Via Gracchiano nel Corso 80, is the most commercial, with archaeological bits and an Etruscan tomb displayed in its cellars, and boasts the most free samples. Its neighbor

Avignonesi,

no. 93, is the classiest cantina in town; no cellars to explore, but a bar to tipple gratis from one of Italy's oldest and most respected wineries.

Giant casks with glass baubles aging Vino Nobile di Montepulciano in the Cantina de Redi cellars.

Classic

Cantina del Redi,

installed in the mutli-story foundations of Palazzo Ricci on Via Ricci, stacks huge barrels in a series of towering, narrow brick vaults connected by steep underground staircases running from the palazzo's lovely panoramic courtyard on Via Ricci down to the tasting/shop outlet on Via di Collazzi.

At

Gattavecchi,

Via San Donato, the "shop" where you enter is just a large storage closet off the bottling room, but you can always rustle up a friendly face to pour a sample atop an upended barrel and flip on the lights in the most wonderfully creepy, moldy cellar tunnels in town.

To connect the free booze and nibbles at either end of town, follow the winding main street (it goes by numerous names, all ending in "Corso") lined with an astonishing number of Renaissance palazzi, including

Palazzo Bucelli

(no. 73), which incorporates a collage of 2,700-year-old Etruscan funerary urns as its foundation.

The street climbs steadily, often steeply, to the top of the hill and

Piazza Grande,

one side of which is flanked by Michelozzo's

Palazzo Comunale,

a 14th century travertine copy of Florence's old city hall. Wend your way inside, past civic offices and overstuffed filing cabinets, to climb the crenellated tower for fantastic countryside vistas.

Teh Tempio di San Biagio is a nearly perfect example of Renaissance architecture designed by Antio da Sangallo the Elder just outside teh walls of Montepulciano. The Tempio di San Biagio is a nearly perfect example of Renaissance architecture designed by Antonio da Sangallo the Elder just outside the walls of Montepulciano.

The rest of the piazza is lined by

Renaissance palaces designed by Antonio Sangallo the Elder,

closed at the top end by the rough, never-finished brick façade of the

Duomo (Cathedral),

filled with early 15th century sculptures and a golden altarpiece by Taddeo di Bartoldo.

Just outside this end of town sits an exercise in geometrically precise Renaissance architecture, Antonio da Sangallo the Elder's celebrated

Tempio di San Biagio

(1518-34), a travertine temple to Classical models built on a grassy lawn.

For more information, visit www.comune.montepulciano.siena.it

Where to Stay in Montepulciano

The entrance to Il Riccio, an inexpensive family-run hotel just off Piazza Grande in Montepulciano.

Montepulciano has some great little family-run hotels. One of my favorites is Giorgio and Ivana Caroti's

Meublé Il Riccio (Via Talosa 21, tel. +39-0578-757-713, www.ilriccio.net), with functionally comfortable rooms for €80 (plus €8 for breakfast) over the mosaics studio founded by Giorgio's father.

Marcella rents a trio of simple rooms without bath for €34 above her restaurant

Cittino

(Vicolo della Via Nuova 2/Via Voltaia nel Corso, tel. +39-0578-757-335) that feel just like crashing in your Italian auntie's spare bedroom (one even squeezes in a bunk-bed for families).

Call ahead so the shopkeep-owner can open the door of Affitacamere Bellavista (Via Ricci 25, tel. +39-0578-757-348). The rooms lack character—just a sagging bed, wooden table, and chair—but cost just under €50 (no breakfast), and do offer great valley views, especially the 180 degrees of countryside from no. 6's tiny terrace (avoid viewless no. 5).

For more hotels in Montepulciano, click here.

Where to Eat in Montepulciano

A heaping plate of Tuscany's famous pappardelle al chinghiale (super-wide noodles with wild boar sauce).

Tuscany's famous

papparedelle al chingiale

(sheet-like noodles in wild boar sauce) is sadly often made with frozen, farm-raised boar, but the papparedelle at Montepulciano's down-home

Trattoria Diva & Matteo

is so genuine I once bit into a pellet of buckshot (Via Gracchiano nel Corso 92, 0578-716-951).

Marcella makes everyone feel at home at

Cittino,

recommended as a hotel above. The dining room opens off her living room, and she'll bring out a tray of the pastas hand-made fresh that morning for you to choose from.

You can get great simple dishes and platters of salamis and cheese from the owner's farm at the tavern-like

Osteria dell’Acquacheta

(Via Teatro 22, 0578-758-443).

Everyone from Pirandello to Fellini has made Art Nouveau

Caffè Polizano

their Montepulciano home-away-from-home since 1868 for cappuccino and panini; try to snag a table with picture window valley views (Via Voltaia nel Corso 27-29, 0578-758-615).

How to Get to Montepulciano

Getting to Montepulciano is tricky. There is a "Montepulciano Staz." stop on a local

train line from Siena,

but it's way out in the countryside and not well connected to town. Instead, get off at the "Chiusi/Chianciano Terme" stop where that Siena line meets the main Rome–Florence line; from here, a local bus meets most incoming trains.

[This is an excerpt from my article "Twice the Tuscany, Half the Cost," originally published in the September 2002 issue of Arthur Frommer's Budget Travel magazine. All information was updated in September 2006. Reprinted with persmission.]